Thirst

Colour, 35 mm
Israel, Palestine, 2004, 110 min
Section: Another View

Synopsis

For ten years Abu Shukri has lived in an isolated, primitive settlement in a barren valley. There, he and his wife, two daughters and son make a living as charcoal-burners. Only he and his son find themselves from time to time among other people – in a village not far away where the boy goes to school and his father sells the charcoal made by the family. The father’s decision to bring water to the primitive settlement by means of a water main makes the family’s life easier, but jars its members into new ways of thinking: things do not always have to be the same, they can change. The father does not admit the possibility of leaving the settlement and his way of life, but all the others set themselves against him. The conflict with his daughter Gamila, whom he loves though is unable to tolerate her defiance, becomes a source of tragedy. Does young Shukri know how to go his own way? Or is he subject to tradition and will walk in his father’s footsteps? The director’s native region – an area of conflict occupied by the Palestinian minority around the city Um El-Fahem – was his source of inspiration. It led him to create a drama about a search for freedom which exists only within us. But the director himself contends that his film is political only to the extent that all stories and relationships between people are political.

About the director

Tawfik Abu Wael (b. 1976, Um El-Fahem) studied direction at university in Tel Aviv. In 1996-98 he worked in the university archive, and from 1997 to 1999 he taught drama at the Hassan Arafe school in Jaffa. He has made the short films Bread, Hashish and the Moon (1997), I Leave, You Stay (1998), Intellectual in Garbage (1999), Characters (1988) and Diary of a Male Whore (1999). In 2001 he made the hour-long documentary Waiting for Salleh El-din, which attracted attention at the festival in Tel Aviv and at international festivals in Munich, Montecatini and Paris. His latest film, Thirst, was shown in international Critic’s Week at the Cannes IFF, where it won FIPRESCI Award.